XVII.
Meantime, Sir Laureate, I proceed to dedicate,
In honest simple verse, this song to you.
And if in flattering strains I do not predicate,
'Tis that I still retain my "buff and blue";
My politics as yet are all to educate:
Apostasy's so fashionable, too,
To keep one creed's a task grown quite Herculean:
Is it not so, my Tory, Ultra-Julian?
VENICE, September 16, 1818.